As A Knife Loves A Heart
by tasteofhysteria
Summary: "And what is given in evidence is how I will forever be laid lower and lower until I am the very center of the earth. Then I shall have the power to destroy you and you will wonder when it will come. And that will be the day that I show you what love is." Russia, from the 1780s to the present day.
1. August 1781-Part I

A/N: Obviously I do not own Hetalia; the only thing I own herein is my own characterization of said characters and two very fat kitties. Historical notes (of a scanty variety until we get into the meat of the thing) are at the bottom. I've really no idea what I'm doing with this; I just wanted to write more Russia. Again, I hope you enjoy my interpretation of the fellow. I don't write him to follow the Himaruya version.

_August, 1781_

"I'm not really one for childminding."

"My God, Vanya," Ekaterina commented. "We haven't even finished breakfast yet and already you're fretting about the delegation from America."

"Not the delegation, no," he answered vaguely, abandoning his tea cup at his empress's small sitting room table to stand in front of one of the room's tall windows, gazing down the long road that eventually twisted out of sight.

He felt rather than saw the wry expression she made at his back and forced himself to turn and face her, a small and slightly amused smile on his face. "It is the America part of the equation that concerns me most," he admitted. "He's barely out of breechclothes and yet we throw him into court."

Ekaterina leaned forward slightly, eyebrows quirked in interest.

"Such concern," she said slyly, holding out her hand for him to take. He bent immediately to take her hand into his own and brush his lips politely against her knuckles; her eyes softened slightly as she took her hand back and picked up her teacup up again. "It's rare that I see you in such a…state, you know, over strangers. Is he special, this little America? Really, I think you're being more lenient on him than Great Britain would've been when it comes to matters of court."

"Sophia…"

"Is he handsome?" she interrupted, her polite smile blossoming into a grin quite unapologetically at his expense before she tempered it back into the decorous expression of an empress. "Oh, surely he must be—you are all of you so beautiful, I can't imagine what the New World itself might look like."

"_Sophia_—"

Russia sighed harshly and turned away again, pinching the bridge of his nose as if to stave off the impending headache he could feel coming on.

She looked upon him fondly as he stalked back to his post at the window and straightened into an impeccable parade rest with his hands clenched behind his back.

"You are utterly infuriating," he remarked to her in German.

"And you are utterly besotted," she replied in kind, rising gracefully from her seat.

"No," he said immediately, "I leave that in the able hands of your Lanskoy."

"Oh, Alexander," she brightened immediately, as if she had forgotten the young man existed at all. "Well, all the better if little America is handsome. Sanya has been a bit too complacent. He could use a bit of fresh blood around here to keep him on his toes."

Russia was far too well-mannered to roll his eyes at her private antics, choosing instead to keep his eyes on the cloud of dust that was rising in the distance, signaling the arrival of their guests. She observed the cloud over his shoulder, a calculating light coming into her eyes that had him turning away again in discomfort.

"I think," Russia replied archly, "that that would hardly entertain you nearly as much as you think it would."

"I tease you," Ekaterina said softly, coming up behind him and resting her palm against his shoulder for a brief moment before stepping away in a sweep and rustle of silken skirts. "You've worn black for so long. But do keep an eye on the boy for me, dear heart."

Russia inclined his head and delivered a shallow acknowledging bow. She smiled, pleased, before turning to take her leave.

"Or at least," she added, with a wicked glint in her eye as an attendant opened the door for her departure, "keep an eye on him until I can do so myself."

Russia found himself alone, the palace attendants already well-familiar with his preferences with being left to his own devices. But the silence in this paneled room of dark wood and heavy draperies felt loud in his ears suddenly; each mote of dust lighting upon the furniture seemed like hail upon rooftops.

He ached most profoundly for the absence of his sister and thought wistfully of how her serene personality was always a balm for his nerves, how her mere presence spurred him past the limits of his more embarrassing failings in a public sphere.

Selfishly, he wanted her there. As her elder brother, he dared not subject her to a group of strange western men of unknown temperament, supposed allies or not.

Hooves clattering on the cobblestones in the courtyard below rang out in tandem with the bustle of servants throwing open the palace doors to receive their guests.

Russia refused to look down into the courtyard, staring determinedly out into the distance until the greens and blues of the landscape blurred and all he could see was his own faint reflection in the glass. Hair cut unfashionably short like the farmer he was and that his royalty tried to insist he was not, dirty-blond curls still intact from disdain of wearing wigs. A pale face, one he'd stared at for so long that the features became alien and unfamiliar.

There was no reason, he chided himself, to be feeling self-conscious in front of a _child_. Still, he stared down at his dark clothing and quietly cursed Ekaterina for mentioning it in the first place. She was a brilliant woman, cunning, but a Prussian princess in his eyes, first and foremost.

An attendant knocked quietly on the sitting room door, opening it just wide enough for the woman to quietly murmur that their American guests were being received in the Reception Room. He acknowledged her tidings and dismissed her with a curt nod. Alone again, he inhaled deeply, letting his customary facade of stoic, banal pleasantry settle into place.

It would have to do.

**Ekaterina/Sophia:** Ekaterina II was born as _Sophia Augusta Frederica_ in the German city of Stettin, Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland), on April 21, 1729. When she was 15, Sophia traveled to Russia at the invitation of Empress Elizabeth to meet the heir Grand Duke Peter, son of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. The two were married in 1745. Peter, a German, could hardly speak Russian and was highly unpopular for his strongly pro-Prussian policies. His assassination in 1762 was likely through the machinations of his wife, who succeeded him to the throne as Ekaterina II.

**Alexander Lanskoy:** Lanskoy was the youngest of Catherine's favorites. Catherine almost had a maternal feeling for this young man, as her letters to Grimm show. She was proud of him, praised his love for art and she seemed to be genuinely fond of him. She had at last found someone who loved her. She had experienced many disappointments, but here was a young man who seemed happy and content in her company. Four years went by. Lanskoy went out riding and fell, developed first chest pains from the fall, then contracted diphtheria. He died on June 14, 1784. Catherine was devastated. She buried him in Sophia and built a church over his grave. In Tsarskoe Selo Park she had a funeral urn placed in his memory, inscribed with the words "To my dearest friend."

More to come!


	2. August 1781-Part II

He may have been silent, but his eyes may have said enough. That blue gaze was examining everything. Alfred wanted to memorize the architecture and every difference he could register. How did they build their walls and why? If it was with different materials than his own, was it because it was truly better, or more suited for this particular climate, or simply more economical? What had developed out of cultural values versus necessity, or both? What did this man's attire say to another Russian? Or to that one's?

They'd been guided into a room and, for the moment, left alone after a few words were exchanged between the guide and Alfred's ambassador.

"...try not to smile at everyone and everything here, Alfred," Francis said softly. "Remember, they could take it as your enjoyment of their home, but they might also very well take it as an indication that you are a fool."

Alfred moved around the room, inspecting it carefully and reverently running a hand over one of the elegantly carved chairs. "I'll try, but—-but look at this," he said with the same enthusiasm he bore for pretty much everything he encountered.

"Yes, it's a nicely designed chair, Alfred," Francis said almost dismissively, shaking his head. He paused at the next words that left Alfred's mouth, however, and this time spoken in French:

"But everything's more than what it looks like it is. They took us to a room like this for a reason. What are they telling us with their furniture? With the person they had guide us here? What about me? What have I told them, in their eyes? This room is beautiful, Francis; it's filled with things they obviously took care to make and create exactly for this." Alfred's gaze took a somber turn. "I think Arthur would have said to be wary. That this is boasting, this is showmanship, this is lulling fools into a sense of comfort so that you can win the game."

He finally drifted from the chair back to a window, looking out at everything. "But it's not a game," he continued cheerfully in English. "They should love their home as much as I love my own, so why should there be any shyness about it? I'm no danger to them, not at all-I'm here to learn and be grateful for the Tsaritsa's choices during the war."

"It would serve you better to be wary of the Tsaritsa's choices," Francis said resignedly, in French.

"Et ton cheval de bataille est chercher la petite bête?"

The tsaritsa herself swept into the room, resplendent in a gown of deep ivory, intricately embroidered with golden thread. Russia, from a small balcony alcove on the upper floor, sighed to himself and shook his head in exasperated amusement. Two aides fluttered into the room behind the Empress, utterly ignored as they set the room to rights, one silently throwing open curtains over the tall windows as the other rapidly set places for tea. The samovar bubbled quietly in the background.

"You surprise me, Francis," she said playfully, her voice rich and feline as she placed one hand delicately over her décolleteé, as though wounded by the politic criticism. (Russia knew, privately, that she rather delighted in being considered so very clever and conniving. No small matter that she quite probably _was_.) The other hand, immaculately manicured and fairly dripping with jeweled rings, she held out to receive the appropriate kisses for courtesy.

"It pleases me immensely to receive you into my home," she continued, one of the servants appearing behind with a chair that she settled into as gracefully as a swan. "Certainly I have heard much about the New World and even though this is not _precisely_ an official sort of visit, I did so want to lay eyes on him myself..."

Her voice drifted off into a faintly questioning and curiously suggestive tone as her imperious gaze lit upon America himself, unreadable above her pleasant smile.

"...and I find myself not at all disappointed. Marvelous." A servant held out a silver tray with a cup of tea balanced on it. Catherine gave the girl an acknowledging nod before accepting it, glass and gilt silver held delicately between her fingertips. The tray was then extended to the two seated guests, small saucers and trains of various accouterments arranged around the cups themselves, not all of them immediately recognizable.

"I would suggest you sweeten your tea," Catherine commented. Her lips curved into a small, amused smile over the rim of her cup. "Most find their first experience a trifle bitter."

_My God_, Russia despaired from above, _she really is so brazen._

He stepped away from the railing of the small balcony, stepping towards a narrow doorway that would lead downstairs and only a short walk from the antechamber. Better, perhaps, that he did not leave their guests alone with his Empress for too long lest the entirety of the conversation devolve into innuendo and he spent the rest of the delegation's visit deflecting advances and thereby garnering his sovereign's ire.

A few moments later he paused, framed silently between the paired golden pillars that formed the doorway to the antechamber itself.

Dappled summer sunlight dripped lazily through the large windows, glinting off the gilded woodwork and polished parquet. Mostly he was struck by how it cast a halo around the New World, warm and shining.

This, he decided abruptly, was going to be immensely troublesome.

Notes: The next chapter, now with some artistic license! More notes: **"****Et ton cheval de bataille est chercher la petite bête?":** In so many words, "And your main focus is nitpicking?" **"Not precisely an official sort of visit":** Francis Dana of Massachusetts was appointed as the American minister to the Russian Empire on December 19th, 1780. The artistic license comes in here because although Dana proceeded to his post, he was never officially received at Russian court. Though he was never officially recognized by Tsaritsa Ekaterina II, he remained at his post in St. Petersburg until 1783. **The antechamber:** As can be seen here. 


End file.
